Bengaluru: Wipro Ltd raised salaries for its employees in May by an average of 9.5%, slightly higher than what larger rival Infosys Ltd paid and a little lower than what Tata Consultancy Ltd awarded in 2016.

Effective 1 June, Wipro awarded an average salary increase of 9.5% for its offshore employees and 2% for employees located at customer sites. High performers will be rewarded with substantially higher increases in their compensation, the company said.

Wipro’s average salary hike for its 150,000 employees in 2016 is higher then the 7% it gave in the previous year.

In April, Infosys announced an average of 9% salary hike for its employees in India. Those at customer location outside the country got an average hike of just 1%. TCS in April said it would give an average hike of 10% in FY17.

Human resource consulting firm Aon Hewitt predicted a salary hike of 9.5% for the IT services industry in financial year 2016-17. Overall, Indian firms are expected to give hikes to the order of 10.3%.

For IT companies, salary costs account for a significant part of the revenue. About 58% of Wipro’s cost of revenue was from salary costs.

Analysts say, average hikes is of lesser consequence now as most of the companies have done away with the bell curve appraisal system.

“As companies are heading towards meritocracy, the low performers may not even get a hike, while top performers stand to make much more than average. So the average hike is of lesser consequence now as companies have moved away from the bell curve,” said Sandeep Muthangi, vice-president for research at IIFL Capital.

Infosys first abandoned the bell curve in 2015, then Wipro did away with it in March 2016, closely followed by TCS in April.